Keep getting "last message repeated 20 times" working as root in cli,it even appeared when I was editing /etc/ttys.
Done a bit of googling and it appears it may have something to do with my permissions,Im not very good with ownership problems,so I dont really know what info to give you.
ls -ld / shows.
drwxr-xr-x 20 root wheel

This is syslog's way of saving time/cycles. Instead of having to generate a timestamp for each repeated message, and writing each repeated message to disk, and slowing things down, if it detects more than a couple repeated log messages, it just tallies them instead.

Check /var/log/messages to find the line right above the "repeat x times" line. That will show you what is happening.

The message being repeated is
cant exec getty usr/local/kde4/bin/kdem for port /dev/ttyv8 no such file or directory
I had prior to the repeated messages uninstalled kde4(not a mean feat) but forgot to change the line in /etc/ttys
it still read ttyv8 "/usr/local/kde4/bin/kdm -nodeamon xterm on secure
I have put this back to its original state,and have so far not had any repeated messages.
Please say that I have got it right coming from you I will feel so good.

Reverting that line in /etc/ttys was the correct fix. It was pointing to a non-existent file, hence the error message. getty (or is it init) detects when a process that it is managing crashes and attempts to restart it. Which is why the message kept repeating, as getty was in a loop (start kdm, file not found, wait, repeat).